


someday, someday

by skadthi



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, How To Care For Your Emotionless Prophet Child: A Story By Jeralt Eisner, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-09-07 09:14:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20307061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skadthi/pseuds/skadthi
Summary: Jeralt's life, from the moment his child was born, to the moment he died.





	someday, someday

**Author's Note:**

> EDIT 2/15: They gave Byleth's mother a name! I changed it here to Sitri. If I missed any instance, please let me know.
> 
> also  
"i wanna be a mercenary," leonie cried. "make me a mercenary." but jeralt did not answer. he just kept on mercenary-ing.

Everyone always spoke about the miracle of parenthood- that it's all unconditional love from the moment you meet your child until your dying breath. In a way, Jeralt understood. When Sitri was pregnant, he was overjoyed.

Now, with Sitri dead and rotting in the ground, he wasn't so sure.

When Jeralt stared into his daughter's eyes, he felt nothing but abject misery. Byleth's features were all Sitri's; in fact, even now when she was only few days old, Jeralt could already tell that Byleth was going to grow up to look exactly like her mother.

Maybe things would be different if Jeralt had to do something- anything- fatherly. As it were, Byleth never cried. She never acted like anything was wrong, never yelled for her parent, never babbled and cooed. She just sat there, perfectly still, staring up at Jeralt with those goddess-forsaken eyes.

Jeralt brought up Byleth's silence to Rhea, once. She told him not to worry and that all children were different. Inevitably, she said, Byleth would start to behave more like a normal infant.

He wanted to believe Rhea more than anything in the world, if for nothing else than for the benefit of Sitri, but it was difficult to believe.

"Hey, squirt," Jeralt said one evening. He found it easier on everyone if he acted like nothing was wrong.

Byleth just stared up at him from her spot in her crib. She remained unmoving. Above them, the mobile that Sitri had crafted by hand rotated slowly as a gentle breeze drifted in through the window.

"Still nothing, huh?" Jeralt snorted, suddenly acutely aware that he was talking to an unresponsive baby. "How about I tell you about my day then?"

He pulled a chair over to the crib and, hesitantly, picked Byleth up. She seemed too small in his arms.

"I woke up, ate some breakfast, trained, and spoke to some of the midwives," Jeralt said. Spoken aloud, he realized that his day was boring, even when compared to the day in the life of a baby. "Uh, that's pretty much it. I'm here now though."

Byleth was an infant and, up until now, had never shown any emotion at all, nor was she able to even understand what Jeralt was saying. Regardless, it almost looked to him like she was unimpressed by his story. He snorted again and then sombered.

"I, uh, visited your mother. Gave her some flowers. She always- she always loved when I gave her flowers."

As he spoke, he felt his eyes fill with tears. It seemed like the oddest things these days made him cry. Earlier, when he stood at his wife's gave, he didn't shed a tear, but now, talking to his child, he felt ready to bawl.

Jeralt forced himself to take a deep breath. Even if Byleth was the only one around, he hated to show weakness. When he blinked and looked back down at her, he was startled to see that Byleth had moved.

Her arm was raised up. She wasn't trying to grab anything; her hand was still wide open in the air. Confused, Jeralt lowered his head, and Byleth reached up quickly and grabbed with a vice grip onto his beard.

"Ouch," Jeralt said, mostly out of surprise. "What on Earth are you doing, kiddo?"

Byleth's face remained impassive as always, but when Jeralt tried to untangle her hand from his beard, she kept a firm grip. Of course, if he wanted, it would be easy to tear her hand away, but he didn't. Mystified, he sat in silence, his hand over her small one.

Abruptly, Jeralt started laughing. He tried to stop because Byleth was resting partly against his stomach, but when he tried to hold her a little bit farther away, the movement pulled on his beard and he started laughing harder. It was just too bizarre that this, of all things, was the first action Byleth had ever done.

Tears sprang to his eyes again, but this time they were of mirth rather than sadness. Being careful not to jostle Byleth too much, he tried to rub his eyes on his shoulder. And as suddenly as it first happened, Byleth dropped her arm.

Her gaze was still expressionless. When Jeralt looked back down at her, she yawned and closed her eyes.

It wasn't quite affection blooming in Jeralt's chest, but he thought it might be something heading along that path. "Huh," he said. Maybe Rhea was right after all.

  
In the end, Jeralt lit the monastery on fire and snuck Byleth out in the dead of night.

Too many things weren't adding up: Byleth's lack of emotions, Sitri's death, Rhea's fretting over Byleth's development. When the doctor told him that Byleth didn't have a heartbeat, he knew he couldn't keep her at Garreg Mach any longer.

One of his knights took Byleth and ran while Jeralt stayed behind so it would seem less suspicious. He knew that hearing all the condolences around the monastery and seeing their pitying looks would be hard on him, but he wasn't aware of quite how difficult it would be.

Jeralt knew that Byleth was safe and alive and that he would be able to see her again in two days, tops. But standing at the grave they had fashioned for her next to Sitri's is- it's too much.

He was crouching in front of both of their graves when someone approached. Jeralt didn't bother looking back; he knew who it was just by their footsteps.

"Hello, Sir Jeralt," Seteth said.

"What do you want?" Jeralt asked. Seteth unnerved him on the best of days, and today he had the excuse of grief to be curt with him.

Seteth surprised him by simply sitting down next to him on the grass. "I merely came to express my condolences. I, too, have lost many people dear to me."

Jeralt didn't move, but he did glance over at Seteth out of the corner of his eye. Seteth's expression was unreadable as always. It was part of why he left Jeralt unsettled. Now, though, Jeralt thought he could detect a hint of sadness in his tone.

He didn't bother responding to him, and for his part, Seteth seemed content to sit in silence. When someone approached them, Seteth sent them away with nothing more than a stern glance.

As the sun set behind the horizon, Jeralt silently planned how he was going to leave Garreg Mach undetected as soon as possible.

  
Byleth wasn't a curious child, or a reckless child, or an adventurous child. In fact, she didn't seem to have much of any personality at all. It worried Jeralt, of course, but he could also see the advantages of it.

The life of a mercenary was dangerous. Jeralt was at least thankful that Byleth didn't seem to have the urge to go looking for any unnecessary risk. When he trained her in swordfighting, she pushed herself just as hard as he wanted her to- no more, no less. That meant she was never in any danger of hurting herself, because Jeralt took great care to never push her beyond her limits.

It was inevitable that at some point Byleth would get hurt, but with no accidents in the five years they had been on the road, Jeralt had found himself grow lax. Laxer than he should have, anyway.

They were travelling across a forest when it happened. Byleth was alone on her horse, trotting along slowly in front of him. Jeralt barely had time to yell "Byleth!" in the time it took for her to tilt sideways off her saddle and land hard on the ground.

There was a loud crack when Byleth landed, and Jeralt cringed. He leapt off his horse, closing the gap between them quickly. He righted her gently, leaving her sitting cross-legged on the ground.

"Where does it hurt, kiddo?" he asked. Byleth's arm was laying at an odd angle in a way that was clearly painful, but she didn't seem too bothered. She just stared down at it blankly.

"My arm," she said slowly. "My knee, too, but I think I just scraped it."

A quick look at her knee told him it was just scraped up. Still, he took out his water flask and dumped it over the cut to wash the dirt off. Byleth still didn't react.

"Can I touch your arm?" he asked and gently rolled her sleeve up when she nodded. It was bruised along her upper forearm, near her elbow. It was clearly broken, but fortunately for both of them, it didn't seem too bad.

Still, he swore while he inspected it. "We're about an hour from the nearest town," Jeralt guessed. He stood up and grabbed a vulnerary from his pack. "Take this and tell me how you feel."

Byleth did, and then she thought silently for a moment. "I can make it," she said. "It doesn't hurt as much now."

She seemed sure enough and had no reason to lie, so Jeralt decided to take her at her word. He picked her up as gingerly as he could and set her back on her horse, making sure she couldn't accidentally slip out again. This time, he steered his own horse next to Byleth's, close enough that he could catch her should she fall again.

"Tell me, kiddo," he said a couple minutes into their trek. "Is there a reason you fell off your saddle?"

Byleth nodded. "I'm sleepy. Haven't been sleeping real well the past few nights."

"Oh?"

"Yeah," she continued. "I keep having bad dreams, so I just stay awake. It's easier."

Jeralt had noticed that she had seemed more tired the past few days, but he had not noticed the extent of it, it seemed. Guilt, strong and heavy, sat in his chest like a physical weight. "What were you dreaming about?" he asked.

Byleth looked up at the sky before answering. "There's a lot of red, on me and on her. She keeps pushing on my tummy and yelling at someone. What he did was selfish and wrong, but I don't really want her to be sad. I don't know how to tell her that. She won't listen to me. Do you know how to, Dad?"

It was bizarre to hear come out of a six year old child's mouth, and honestly, Jeralt didn't know how to respond. "I don't know, kiddo."

Byleth set her gaze back to the path in front of them. Her eyebrows were scrunched together a little. "I think I'm going to be quiet again," she said.

"Okay," Jeralt replied.

There were no more mishaps on the way to the town. Byleth was silent when the doctor there assessed the damage to her arm, not making a single move while the doctor poked and prodded at her injury.

She didn't say anything until that night when they made camp. Jeralt had his back to her while he started a fire, preparing to cook some fish that he purchased in town.

"I will sleep tonight," Byleth said. Jeralt looked back at her. She forced a smile on her face, and even though he could tell it wasn't completely sincere, it still made him smile back instinctively. "I'm sorry for worrying you, Dad."

Jeralt walked over and ruffled her hair. "It's my job to worry about you, squirt."

That night, Byleth did what she said she would and fell asleep almost as soon as her head hit her pillow. Jeralt stayed awake watching her sleeping face for as long as his tired eyes would allow.

  
It wasn't Jeralt's plan to continue to grow his mercenary company, but it was what happened anyway.

The men under his leadership were good people, and even if Jeralt did hold them at arm's length, he trusted them to watch his back. More importantly, he trusted them around his daughter.

They received word, one day, of bandits harassing a nearby town. As much as he tried to stamp it out, being a knight was in Jeralt's blood, and he could not in good conscience leave the situation as it was. The rest of the group didn't want to stick their nose in the village's business, and Jeralt couldn't exactly blame them. There was no money involved in helping them, after all.

Even still, Jeralt decided to lend the village a hand. He left Byleth in the care of a mercenary he trusted moreso than the others and began the short journey towards the village.

In the end, the bandits were easy to take care of, even with just one person. The village was beyond thankful, offering him as much food and supplies as they could possibly afford. He denied everything beside a bundle of potatoes- they were Byleth's favorite food.

He was preparing to leave when he felt a tug on the end of his pants. Jeralt looked down to see a girl almost the same age as Byleth staring up at him with a determined expression. "Teach me how to be a fighter like you," she declared.

Surprised, Jeralt could do nothing but laugh. "Where are your parents, little girl?"

That just seemed to make the girl angrier. "My name is not little girl," she said. "My name is Leonie Pinelli, and you're going to teach me how to fight like you."

"Am I now? Why am I going to do that?"

"So I can make sure those guys don't come back to the village," Leonie said. She stuck her nose in the air as if she was trying to seem taller than she actually was. "I'm not gonna let anything like this happen again."

That got Jeralt's attention. He turned away from his horse and looked more carefully at Leonie's face. The only real similarity between her and Byleth was their age, but staring down at Leonie still made his breath catch in his throat. He suddenly felt a great need to protect her- the same feeling he got sometimes when he looked at Byleth.

Goddess damn him and goddess damn his bleeding heart. He was getting soft in his old age.

"Fine," he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. Leonie's face lit up and he felt a wave of exhaustion settle over him. "I'll teach you some basics, but only for today."

The anniversary of Sitri's death came and went every year without fail, but oddly enough, it wasn't that day that upset Jeralt the most.

He woke Byleth up at dawn and led her to a small lake near their camp. She was twelve now- almost a teenager. Byleth was looking more and more like Sitri every day.

When they stood, silent, in front of the lake, Jeralt put his hand heavily on Byleth's shoulder. She jolted a little at the touch and looked up at him, only to find his gaze fixed on the water in front of them.

"What is it?" Byleth asked.

"It's," Jeralt began, and then stopped. He took a deep breath. "Today is your mother's birthday."

If Byleth was surprised, she didn't show it. "Oh," she said. "You've never talked about her before."

"No, I haven't," Jeralt agreed. He sat down on the bank and gestured for Byleth to do the same. Hesitantly, he said, "Do you want me to tell you about her?"

Byleth looked curiously at him before shaking her head. "Not really."

It wasn't the answer he had expected. "You don't?"

"You look sad."

Jeralt let out a surprised chuckle. "Yeah, I guess I am. Don't let that stop you though. I have to talk about it at some point."

Byleth picked up a stone and absentmindedly twirled it between her fingers. Finally, she looked up at him. Her face, like it almost always was, was expressionless. "No," she said. "Not really. I don't wanna make you more upset."

It was a surprising display of concern from Byleth. Jeralt didn't think that Byleth was cruel, of course, but up until now he had just assumed that she didn't feel much of anything at all, especially not worry. Jeralt felt all at once guilty that he thought that about her, but he also felt affection bloom in his chest. It grew until he thought it might swallow him up, leaving only love for his child behind.

He knew his eyes must've been soft in a way that was very much unlike him, so he gently nudged Byleth's arm to try to regain any dignity he had left. "Nah," he said gruffly. "You'll have to work harder than that to bother me. I meant what I said."

Byleth looked at him for a moment and then glanced back down at the lake. She tossed the stone in her hand in the lake, probably hoping that it would skip like one of the other mercenaries taught her, but it just landed hard once, spreading ripples throughout the water. Nearby, a bird squawked indignantly in a tree.

"How did she die?" Byleth asked. She kept her gaze on the rippling water even when Jeralt looked back down at her.

"Sickness," Jeralt responded after a moment's pause. "She got sick when you were just a baby and died soon after."

"Oh," Byleth said absently. "Dad, I want to become a mercenary."

"_What? _Where did that come from?"

"I always sit back at camp while you and the others go off to fight," she said. "I feel useless. I want to be a mercenary too."

His kneejerk reaction was _no, you're too young,_ but before he responded he stopped to think. This was the first time he could remember Byleth ever asking for something that wasn't a need. Even then, Byleth only ever asked Jeralt for something when it was absolutely necessary. It made parenting hell sometimes- Jeralt wasn't exactly the most perceptive person when it came to other people's wants and needs.

In his head, Jeralt could almost hear Sitri's reaction to Byleth's response: a hard _no_. She would never allow her child to go off to battle when she was this young. In fact, Jeralt doubted that Sitri would even want Byleth to have held a sword by this age. She never did believe in violence.

Part of him wanted to respect Sitri's wishes. It was the same part that made him drag Byleth here at the crack of dawn to do nothing other than reminisce. That, like his desire to listen to the ghost of his wife whispering in his ear, was for his benefit. It wasn't for Byleth's.

Jeralt swallowed hard. Maybe it was time to move forward. He would never be able to forget Sitri, but now he had different priorities.

He looked at Byleth and smiled. "Sure, kiddo."

Garreg Mach was exactly the same as Jeralt remembered, and that was not something that pleased him.

Everything since meeting the royal brats outside Remire Village, to Alois's sudden arrival, to returning to the monastery, of all places, happened almost too fast for him to keep up. Before he knew it, he was standing before Rhea again, and wasn't that a really shitty blast from the past.

Rhea decided to make Byleth a professor at the academy almost instantly upon meeting her. He knew Rhea was up to something, especially considering how she treated Byleth as a baby. There was something she was plotting, and it infuriated Jeralt to no end that he couldn't figure out what.

He warned Byleth before she left that she needed to be on her guard. He hoped that everything he taught her in the years leading up to this would be enough for her to survive. As for Jeralt, he had his own missions to see to.

The "incident" happened one night as he was coming home from a week-long mission with the Knights of Seiros. He was tired as all hell, barely able to drag his feet through the halls of the monastery.

Tired as he was, he decided to head to the kitchen to get some food before he retired to bed. On his way there, he began making half-formed plans to meet up with Byleth before he left on his next mission.

"_Claude! Hilda!_"

Speak of the devil.

Jeralt saw Byleth enter through a doorway in front of him, stopping two startled students in their paths. They turned around to face her, looking sheepish. From the looks of it, Jeralt figured that none of them could see him from the bottom of the stairs.

"Why are you two out of bed?" Byleth asked impatiently, setting her hands on her hips. "And Claude, stop, I can clearly see that you're holding something behind your back. You're not being even remotely sneaky."

The girl- Hilda, he presumed- stomped on Claude's foot, evidently upset at his lack of discretion in hiding whatever was behind his back. From the angle Jeralt was standing at, he thought that it just looked like an ordinary bottle.

Byleth reached out a hand, gesturing for Claude to hand over whatever he had, and with a moment's hesitation, he did so. Byleth turned the bottle over in her hand before slowly asking, almost like she didn't want to know the answer, "Why in the holy hell are you two wandering about at two in the morning with a bottle of hair dye?"

"Oh, you know how it is, Professor," Hilda drawled. "He was just so embarrassed about it, but Claude has been growing a few gray hairs lately and he asked me to help him out. Because I'm such a good friend, I offered to do this during the dead of the night when no one else was awake so he wouldn't be as upset about it."

This time, Claude was the one to stomp on Hilda's foot. Byleth leveled them both with a flat glare. "I can clearly see that this is green hair dye, Hilda. Mind telling me the real story?"

Claude sighed, but even from Jeralt's position, he could tell that Claude was really just excited to let Byleth in on his prank. "We snuck some of the dye into Lorenz's shampoo."

There was a beat of silence and then Byleth turned away, her hand coming up to cover her face in disappointment. "I'm not going to ask why because honestly, I'm too tired to deal with this right now. Both of you, go back to your rooms. You'll be receiving your punishment tomorrow."

Both Hilda and Claude walked off quickly, snickering, but they stopped when Byleth yelled, "Oh, and kids? If I hear that you didn't head immediately back to your rooms, I'll make sure you get assigned to all of your chores with Lorenz for the rest of the year."

Claude and Hilda scampered off, evidently more fearful of that threat than Byleth's earlier one. Jeralt walked up a couple steps, ready to call out to Byleth, and then he stopped.

Thinking herself alone, Byleth was… laughing. She backed up against a stone pillar and clutched at her stomach, staring at the bottle of hair dye and _laughing_. Jeralt realized now that she covered her face earlier not to hide her disappointment, but to hide her smile.

It's mesmorizing, watching Byleth laugh. Jeralt could count on one hand how many times he had seen Byleth genuinely smile in her entire lifetime, much less _laugh_.

Suddenly more awake and less hungry, Jeralt turned around and left the hallway to head for his room with a new spring to his step that he wouldn't admit to anyone.

All those years of fighting experience and he still didn't see the knife coming.

He vaguely recognized the girl thanking him as the one that was found with the girl, Flayn, when she was kidnapped. Maybe he let his guard down because he thought she would still be weak from her imprisonment, or maybe Byleth's soft spot for the students was finally rubbing off on him. Either way, it doesn't matter. Regardless of the reason, he still ended up with a knife in the back.

At first, the wound didn't hurt. He could feel it there, yes, but it was just _there_. Mostly, he felt shock and fear- both for himself and for Byleth, who he distantly heard screaming somewhere off to his right.

The pain didn't start until Byleth rolled him over. His back was on fire, and he could feel every part of the knife that had embedded itself into his spine. Jeralt had been stabbed before, and it felt nothing like this. Poison, if he had to guess. Damn.

His vision was starting to blur, but he forced his eyes to stay open so he could stare at his daughter. Byleth looked horrified at whatever she saw looking down at him. Even after all these months at the monastery, Jeralt still wasn't used to seeing Byleth look so expressive.

More than anything, he hated seeing her in pain. "Sorry," he choked out. "It looks like… I'm going to have to leave you now."

A wave of fresh pain washed over him, forcing him to cry out and squeeze his eyes shut. Tears came to his eyes, brought about by the pain in his back and in his heart. He could feel himself slipping now, and as much as he had prayed all these years to see Sitri again, he was suddenly aware how much he didn't want it to be like this. Not this way, not when Byleth was forced to watch.

Something hit his face, and he opened his eyes to see-

_Oh_.

He smiled, bittersweet.

"To think the first time I saw you cry," he said, "your tears would be for me."

Then, in Byleth's arms, he breathed his last breath.

* * *

_"Jeralt wasn't the most emotional guy. I'm sure expressing his affection wouldn't have come naturally to him. But I hope you know that you were the most important thing in the world to him." -Alois_


End file.
